


The Secrets Between Them

by TRIVlAIove



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Angst, M/M, The Death Cure, newtmas - Freeform, scorch trials
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-14 02:51:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16031447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TRIVlAIove/pseuds/TRIVlAIove
Summary: “If I lie, if I bury my feelings for you, could we go back to how we were? Could I go back to holding you?”Set on the Gladers first night in the Last City, when new landscapes breed old emotions between Newt and Thomas.Or, Newtmas angst brought on my Newt's fear of his disease and Thomas' denial.





	The Secrets Between Them

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I know I'm I have a WIP I haven't finished- yes I knooooow I shouldn't be writing a brand new fic, but I had a spark of inspiration let me LIVE.

The outskirts of the last city spread wide in front of Newt. Unlike the kempt state of inside the wall, the outer city had been left to ruin. Building structures had come away like sand, melding on the ground with broken glass and twisted metal in a sheet of decay. Time had not been kind. It had pushed the city from order into disorder, leaving the people drowning in a sea of infectious vulnerability.

Newt can see the proof of them through broken windows. Their fires dwindle in the darkness, flickering like a poor rendition of the night sky.

The maintained state of the inner city is startling in contrast. Where the outer ring had been left to rot, the centre within the wall exuded wealth. Every building paraded in contemporary architecture and modern technology. Even the wall, a harsh concrete structure that jutted out like a dark mountain between the two sides, was bathed in gaudy guns and fog lights. It was all meant to instil one message, that the city wasn’t to be messed with. Not that it stopped people from trying. People had put the wall up and people could take it down. Right?

Newt turns his attention back to the ruins, and watches as the white light from the wall turns the crumbling roofs to a sick, ash grey. It almost looks like if he breathed too hard he might send everything to pieces and maybe the city would be thankful of it.

A walkie clicks at his waist, an almost silent murmur that his watch was to begin now. In reality, his watch had started two hours ago. Restless, he’d gotten out of the musty smelling sleeping bag he’d called a bed and wandered to take over from Fry.

It was probably for the best, considering the dark skin boy had been swallowed by his dreams, eyes closed and his head resting on his arms. Newt almost felt bad waking him, but then again it was Frypan who had been sleeping on duty, not him.

If it had been any other glader, they would’ve sent Newt back to bed. They might’ve entertained him for a heartbeat or two — let him hang his legs over the side and breath in the cold night air — but it would’ve ended the same.

He needed to rest. Supposedly. Apparently.

According to his friends, his skin had lost its golden colour, his eyes had dimmed, and his demeanour had changed. The cause should’ve been obvious but fatigue was the only explanation they would consider. They were all immune after all. That’s what they had assumed.

Maybe it was only Newt who remembered Winston, and how his skin had grown black and his strength had been stolen out from underneath him by a thief and a disease.

Newt hadn’t been sure before. When the crank had first broken his skin he had thought that perhaps he could be one of the lucky ones. He thought that maybe, just maybe, some deity would allow him this one kindness.

He was sure now though that he was infected. Just as Winston’s was, his skin is stained with black and his strength is seeping away like water through fingers. His mind was slipping through the cracks too and sinking to the floor with no way of getting back up.

He was dying. He was going to die.

Newt’s eyes fall closed and he takes a breath, relishing in the cool night air. There was a reason they used the word scorch to describe these plains. The sun had scorched the planet, yes, but it had also given that power to everything it touched.

During the day, the sand underfoot has the power to burn. As do car bodies, building exteriors, and anything else left out to fend for itself against the daylight.

The day, that once used to shield us from our nightmares, has become a nightmare itself. Instead, the roles have reversed and now the night is the respite they all plead for.

Newt opens his eyes at the sound of gunfire. Just a few shots, far in the distance somewhere toward the wall. They’d never had guns in the maze. Obviously, he and the Gladers knew of them, as they knew of many things they’d never seen, but they’d never fired one. Not until the scorch.

Newt remembered how surprised he’d felt when he held the gun naturally — perfectly. The metal had felt cool and steady in his palm. Easy.

And it had continued to be easy. Killing people, infected or on their way to it, had been easy. Just as living in the maze had once been. But things had a habit of changing their complexity, the maze was just one example of that. It was a certainty that killing couldn’t possibly remain this easy. There was no way murder didn’t come without a price.

Maybe the flare was his price — maybe it was the price for them all. When Newt dies, they will all feel that loss just as someone would’ve felt the loss of their victims. His death will leave a gap in their future for themselves. It would be all they imagined except one important piece — except him.

More shots from the same place. Newt’s gaze remains on that spot like he might be able to see through the buildings to the violence and witness a tragedy other than his own.

That sounds pathetic, doesn’t it? He thinks of his life as if it were a Shakespearean play heading to a beautiful and catastrophic end. But Shakespeare didn’t write reality, he wrote plays. His stories were fantasy, bred and moulded into something recognisable. They were lies sugared with truths so that we wanted to taste them, they were lies fashioned into hooks that would pull his audience’s emotions out on a line.

But lies are still lies. And Newt’s life is no play, it’s a disease.

“Newt.”

His name rings just like the gunshots. Surprising and yet completely expected.

He’d felt the steps rattle the roof — heard the gravel crunch under his feet — and yet he chose not to acknowledge it. Hoping that Thomas, because there is no one else it could be, would leave him to his secrets for a day longer.

The deity watching over him did not grant him this either.

“Newt?” His name is a question now, as it often is. A question without an answer.

“Thomas,” he hums, turning around with a gentle smile that he hopes looks content. He hopes his smile says that he’s fine. Unaffected. Uninfected.

“Fry came back early and you weren’t in your bed...”

Not a question but a question. A statement but not.

“I noticed Fry yawning today, thought I’d give him a couple extra hours.”

A lie coated in truth — Shakespeare would have enjoyed it.

Thomas sees it for what it is and comes to Newt’s side. They sit close, their skin near enough to touch but not daring. Their warmth lingers between them like purring engines. The heat in the space between them would have melted iron.

The two of them sit for a short while in silence, Thomas leaning precariously over the edge to soak in the city and the life inside it. It is a hard thing to digest that life was like this for some, while their life had been… that. A game played out for the WCKD controllers.

“You’ve been distant with me,” Thomas says eventually. It’s strange how Newt not only hears his words but sees them. They appear as white as the moon, written in italics and underlined.

“Yes.”

Not the expected reply but at least he didn’t lie. He had become adept at lying. Just as living in a maze had become natural, so had deceit. But he doesn’t have the energy for it now, not tonight.

There’s a pause, and as the two friends go silent so does the city. Fires still in their crackling and the shouts turn to whispers that meld with the wind. Newt had willed himself to focus and in doing so had let go of the city.

“Is it because of me?"

Newt lifts his gaze to him and he finds Thomas already looking at him. He wonders if Thomas knows how easy he is for Newt to read and if so, maybe he does it on purpose. It only takes a second for Newt to decode the creases in his forehead and the despondent look in his eyes.

Thomas really believes he’s to blame for his distance. The truth is, he’s the only reason Newt’s been able to stay at all.

“Never,” Newt whispers as to not ruin the stillness of the night and the moment. “You mean more to me than you know.”

“And you, me,” Thomas replies, his voice just as still — just as quiet.

They are different with each other, they always had been. In the glade they had been inseparable, sharing space and sharing their own secrets.

They’d shared other things too. Hands, lips, bodies. Secrets they grew together from the ground up that had bloomed into memory.

It hasn’t been something they’d ever wanted to discuss or question, and the one time they had, well, it had changed everything. They still shared secrets, just not all of them. And they hadn’t dare plant any more secrets together.

Newt looks to his legs, hanging over the edge of the wall as they had many years ago. It’s strange how fears can be overtaken. Heights had once been his nightmare, but now he is afraid of something else. Something he daren’t admit.

“So what is it? Is it what I said?”

He doesn’t want to think about it. Hadn’t thought about it since the words left his lips.

Thomas takes the silence as an answer, and Newt knows he is just as right as he is wrong. Newt had other things on his mind, more important, life-threatening things, but he would be lying if he said Thomas’ words hadn’t got to him. They’d been the final nail in the coffin — the gust of wind that finally brought down the house.

“You have to speak to me,” Thomas voices, not allowing himself to be sucked up into the quiet.

“And say what?”

Thomas looks astonished. It’s clear what he wants Newt to say and even clearer that Newt wants to say it. But words like that aren’t easy to take back and it would be selfish of him to say it knowing he wouldn’t have long to show him that he means it.

Thomas shuffles a little bit closer, connecting their bodies from ankle to shoulder. It’s the first time they’ve touched in days and it’s too much and too little all at once.

“Please just—” He leans in, both hands finding their way to Newt’s jaw and into his hair. Everywhere he touches feels too hot like Thomas has become the sun and Newt is a forgotten object left to burn.

“Thomas—”

“I meant it, Newt,” Thomas breathes. They both listen as his voice hits the city and bounces right back like it doesn’t want to hear it- like it knows this conversation should belong only to them.

“I meant it and I still mean it.”

Oh god. Newt feels his mind go to stone. His brain has been struggling to comprehend strong emotions recently. They used more energy than he could afford and always resulted in his mind feeling like sludge. The wild and unexpected nature of them brought his disease to life — comfortable in the chaos they wrought.

“Stop,” Newt whispers. Because what else is there to say? He knows what’s coming and doesn’t want to hear it. He doesn’t deserve it and even if he did, it wouldn’t be his for long.

“Would that bring you back to me?” Thomas replies, his hands shaking against Newt’s skin. “If I lie, if I bury my feelings for you, could we go back to how we were? Could I go back to holding you?”

Newt can’t even look at him. How did their conversation get here? How did he let it?

He doesn’t have the strength to lie tonight but he doesn’t have the strength for these truths either. So he deflects, bats them off like an iron sword to a silver shield.

“Why does it matter?” His words aren’t harsh enough, they come out deflated and monotone like they’re more energy than they’re worth. How is Thomas meant to believe anything he says when it sounds like he doesn’t believe it himself? “We’re in the middle of rescuing Minho—”

“Is this a rescue mission or a trade?” Thomas asks, cutting clean through anything Newt might’ve said. He goes to ask what he means but closes his mouth, knowing already and not having an answer.

Thomas is so perceptive, he always knows what’s ahead of them miles before they get there. Just as he had known they would find the right arm, he knows that something is amiss. He knows, or at least suspects, that Newt wouldn’t be going much further than this.

Newt feels the tears behind his eyes like a lion in a cage. They would be merciless if set free and would fall across his skin in an endless wave. He’d only ever cried in front of Minho, when he’d found him sprawled on the maze floor with his leg twisted backwards impossibly. It was ironic, really, that when he wanted to end his life, he hadn’t been able to but when he finally felt the worth of his life, it was being taken from him.

Maybe his life didn’t have enough value to the heavens before but apparently, it does now.

He sucks in a breath and looks down to his lap — to his gangly legs that have gotten noticeably thinner in these passing days.

He will not cry. He refuses.

“Newt.”

Thomas can’t know that he is infected. They are so close to Minho. Tomorrow they will finally reach that wall and they’ll find a way in. If Newt were to reveal his fate now, Thomas would do everything in his power to send him home even if it meant going back. Newt wouldn’t let that happen.

So despite everything, he picks up the crumbs of his strength and he lies.

“I would never leave you, Thomas,” he murmurs, taking his friend’s hand like he could press the lies into them. “Ever.”

Thomas eyes blur, turning shiny with water. Newt doesn’t let this be his downfall. He doesn’t let the tears of the person he cares for most in the world melt away his facade.

“I’m going to say this again,” Thomas whispers, and this time Newt can hear the struggle he’s having to stop himself from crying. He’s too kind for this violence, whether he wants to believe it or not.

“You don’t have to—”

Thomas shakes his head a little too hard, shaking free a singular tear brewing at the corner of his eye. Newt doesn’t look at how the moonlight reflects in it.

“I want to. I need to.”

So Newt quiets and lets him speak. Just this once. This final time.

“I love you,” Thomas breaths, his breath mixing with the brisk night and settling on Newts lips. “I love you with all that I am. When I’m with you all my problems seem like simple challenges because I know we can solve them together. I know that we can do anything together because I know—” He licks his lips to slow himself down, aware that he’s rambling like a train driving past every station.

“I know that you love me too, Newt. I know it. I’ve felt it in the way that you kiss me and in the way you hold me.”

Newt doesn’t want to think about the nights they’ve spent together. They’re too pure. They sit like stars in his mind, far too bright to be touched by the flare. His disease is a shadow and as long as his memories don’t go out, they have nothing to fear. But he knows it is only a matter of time. Stars eventually die and so will he. So for now, he holds them back but within reach, hoping to conserve them.

“Say something to me,” Thomas sighs, his lips have moved so close that his skin slides so slightly over Newt’s. It sends a shiver down his spine.

“What do you want from me?” Newt whispers back. He’s afraid. This is the new nightmare. The new fear that makes heights seem elementary in comparison.

He can’t admit it to him or himself. If he does, then he will have to live with the fact that whatever comes of it, it will have an expiration date. He will have to live with the fact that this love will be his last and Thomas will likely see this as only a passing season.

“Just tell me I’m not crazy.” Thomas’s thumbs move gently on his cheeks, running over the new and old scars their path had caused. “Please.”

Newt has never been able to deny him. Thomas would never ask him to say those words out right. He’d want it to be of Newt’s own volition, no coaxing and no begging. This though? This would just be Newt quieting his worries. At least for now.

So Newt retracts his earlier thoughts of lies and returns to the truth.

“You’ve always been able to read me so easily...” Newt lifts his hands from where they had stayed stationary in his lap and places them cautiously on Thomas’s waist. It’s nothing they haven’t done before, but he feels his heart quickening in his chest. It thuds so heavily that he worries Thomas may feel it through his palms.

“I don’t think so, Newt—”

“You know how I feel about you and I think you know something else too.” Newt is just as sure about his feelings towards Thomas as he is about this. Thomas is in denial, as they all were. He knows, deep down, that Newt’s life is careening to a short end. He knows that Newt is infected — that he’s dying.

But just like the rest of the gladers, he dares not admit it. And Newt is too big of a coward to say it out loud to him now.

“When did you become this person? You give me half answers to please me, but it’s never what I really want to hear.”

Thomas is right. Newt doesn’t know when he found this path, but it had led him astray. He had become a liar, a murderer, and a coward, all at once.

“What are you hiding from me?” Thomas whispers, thumbs sliding down to Newt’s favourite spot, just below his ear.

Maybe Newt could write it down. Maybe then it wouldn’t be as permanent as saying it out loud. He could write it and burn it all in the same second, watching his rare truths turn to ash.

Thomas coaxes his chin up to look at him, and suddenly Newt’s horizon is only Thomas. They’re so close that his features take up all of his vision. He becomes the night, the moon, and the city. He becomes everything.

“Tell me a secret,” Thomas asks, begs. “Just one.”

He has so many. When asked for just one, it becomes almost impossible to chose. There are things about the maze that he’d never told anyone, scars he’d never explained, nights alone that he’d let go unquestioned.

But there are only two secrets that he can say now.

One is a fear and the other is a nightmare. He just doesn’t know which is which.

“A secret,” he repeats.

The words float between them, glowing like the fires in the windows.

“Yes.” Thomas has gotten closer somehow and at some point, he had rested his forehead against Newt’s. The touch is so familiar — his frame is something New had memorised in the dark. Under the stars he’d mapped every curve with gentle fingers, slowly committing every inch to memory.

“Please,” Thomas whispers.

The words come almost immediately after that, like all his secret had been waiting for were some manners.

“I love you,” Newt says. He ignores how the words taste sweet on his tongue — how right it feels when everything else in his life is so wrong. “I’ve loved you from the second I saw you.”

It takes a second for the words to settle. He sees Thomas digest them and sort through them in his head. He’d guessed but it is entirely different to hear it confirmed. Overwhelming to know that you are loved in return.

Thomas goes to speak, probably to say those words back, but Newt surges forward. Thomas doesn’t need to say it back, he never needed to say it back. Newt knows immeasurably how Thomas feels about him, and every time he’s reminded, it felt grander. Like every ‘I love you’ is a growing agent, and their feelings are a flower that grows up into the clouds. It should be nice, but to Newt, it only means he has something bigger to leave behind.

When their lips connect, it's with feverish urgency. It’s wet and messy, nothing like the kisses they’ve had in the past. Their teeth clash and their tongues slide over one another like they could consume each other's feelings and keep it for themselves. They’d missed how each other tasted — had almost begun to forget.

Newt pulls back slightly, his kisses growing soft and calculated in hopes of slowing the moment. The night always feels everlasting, like each second stretched on endlessly into the next. During the day, the light would ebb and change. The clouds would move across the sky dragging the minutes with them. At night, it’s nothing but dark, which means there is nothing to help the night along except them — except how fast they choose to go.

Newt takes one hand from Thomas’ hips and tilts up the boy’s jaw. The sight of his pale skin against Thomas’ golden tan is enough to pause him for a beat. His skin looks like a stone resting on fine sand — stark in contrast and impossible to hide. He blinks away the image, forcing the proof of his disease to the back of his mind, and plants a kiss to Thomas’ throat. He hears Thomas sigh up at the stars and feels his hands fist in Newt’s hair. The kisses trail up, up, up, to his cheek, then his brow. And Thomas is gasping throughout it all. Shocked by the slow intimacy of it.

When their lips meet again, it’s tantalising. The momentum drags like a wave in an open ocean. With nothing to stop it, it goes on endlessly, curving around the earth until it finds a time to settle.

Newt shuffles them, peeling the two of them away from the roof edge and to the gravel. Thomas goes wherever he bids, like the perfect boy he is. He doesn’t even complain about the stony bed, instead, he lays back happily like they couldn’t have chosen a better place to spend this moment together.

“Newt,” Thomas whispers as Newt settles above him with a smile, soft and unnoticeably pained. How many more times will he get to hear his name from Thomas’ lips? Is it worth it to count?  “I’ve missed you so much.”

Newt stills in his movements, trying and not succeeding in not to read too deeply into that. He wants to trick his mind into believing Thomas only misses him physically and not emotionally. It would make it all a little bit easier — the inevitability of his passing and leaving something so perfect behind.

Thomas' hands slide down to his throat, his thumbs resting like feathers on Newt’s jaw.

“I’ve missed you,” he repeats, making sure it sticks. He doesn’t just miss this, he misses them as a team. He missed how they would talk, how they would laugh, and how they’d trust. Newt misses that too, the only difference is that Thomas is strong enough to admit it.

And so he smiles, small and loving, and Thomas smiles back up at him and to the moon illuminating the two of them — to the deity who has granted him a kindness he hadn’t asked for but needed.

Newt has no chance of changing this path with Thomas. They will be stuck in an expanding orbit, growing further and further apart until one day the distance became too large, and Newt spins into a different loop.

But they have time, a very short time, and he will make it count. For Thomas and for himself.

**Author's Note:**

> As always I'd love to hear what you guys think, negative and positive i'm all ears!! Thank you so much for readinngggggggg. <3 <3 <3


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